A Reason to Be Hopeful About J.J. Abrams's Star Wars

He's going back to what made the original trilogy great

A long time ago, in a lot of exotic shooting locations far, far away, the Star Wars trilogy was made.

Shortly thereafter, a fallen director got really excited by the film equivalent of a new iPhone and was lured to the dark side — literally, doing most of the production in artificially lit studio space and green-screen sets.

There are lots of reasons the prequel trilogy didn't work, but all of them shared a root cause: unnecessary CGI. The little touches, like an all-digital Yoda, may not have made a big impact visually, but at some point you can't even blame actors when their entire job is reacting to empty space and pretending to see things in a big green box.

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That's why any real fans are thrilled to get to see real sets and scenes coming from director J.J. Abrams, who's overseeing the reboot. Over the last few weeks we've seen ships including the Millennium Falcon, and we've heard talk from actors, and it all points to one thing: J.J. Abrams actually knows what he's doing.

Plenty of people have gone on and on about the "human quaalude" problem of the prequel trilogy. And they were right. And a lot of it probably had to do with the fact that good actors were stripped of all their tools. Seriously, how great is it to now see things looking like the rusty Star Wars content of yore and not the over-chromed bling-is-strong-with-this-one crap that took the soul out of episodes I-III?

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How do you feel about hundreds of guys in Stormtrooper costumes preparing for a day of shooting? Well, it's been happening.

Take this quote from Oscar Isaac, from a recent Entertainment Weeklyinterview, as proof:

"There's a lot of enthusiasm and it's being done with a lot of heart. There's nothing cynical about the way we're doing this. Even in the way he's shooting it — he's shooting on film and actually building the sets, so you've got hundreds of Stormtroopers or whatever, and hundreds of extras and all the ships. You actually see it. It's all real. Everyone can interact with the world."

Directors have a lot of reasons to avoid real-life shooting nowadays. It's expensive, for one, and takes a lot of coordinating. Real life is prone to error, which is why live shots with tons of extras always have goofs — watches in ancient Rome, airplanes overhead. Then there's the secrecy factor: How do you keep a hundred people from talking about what they saw, snapping pictures with their phones?

But who cares at the end of it? A movie kept secret from such an adoring fanbase is missing the real opportunity for promotion and marketing. Action figures and Pepsi crossovers are fine, but getting a bunch of nerds Googling every few days for new leaks and pictures is better for everyone.

By the way, J.J. Abrams gets secrecy. If you didn't see Lost, and don't get how to mystify people, take a look at this TED talk.

The set reveals, the videos of spacecraft, the Batman nods: It's all from a guy who's having fun. It makes you believe that ol' J.J. really is like us: just a lucky fan who gets to be in charge for a little while. Lucas forgot about that part of the equation, and that's how you get Jar Jar Binks.

So let's get excited to see more. J.J., if you're reading this, next we want to see lightsabers. Please and thank you.